


"Too Darn Hot"

by RembrandtsWife



Series: On Vinyl [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AIDS/HIV mention, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexual Steve Rogers, F/M, Implied Relationships, Inspired by Music, M/M, Red Hot and Blue, cole porter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 04:04:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1884624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve doesn't like air conditioning, but he does like Cole Porter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Too Darn Hot"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nookienostradamus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookienostradamus/gifts).



> The germ of this story was the album referenced, the 1990 compilation of Cole Porter covers _Red Hot and Blue_ , and in particular Erasure's cover of the title song:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyWArxIbn7w&feature=kp 
> 
> Thanks to nookienostradamus for looking it over, to Cole Porter for being one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, and to the weather in my parts for being, indeed, too darn hot.

Ordinarily Steve didn't like air conditioning, but tonight he almost wished for it. It was only late June, but temperatures had cracked the nineties before noon, and a visible haze still hung over the city at ten-thirty p.m., hiding the few stars you could see from a window in Brooklyn.

Even wearing nothing but a t-shirt and boxers, Steve was still hot. He swiped his third bottle of beer across his forehead and then drank the end of it in one pull. He could take his clothes off, but even in the privacy of his own place, that felt funny. You could take a man out of his time, but you couldn't take the time out of a man.

He debated whether to have another beer, but went for the lemonade instead. He might not be able to get drunk, but he'd still be better hydrated if he didn't drink only beer all night. The lemonade was fresh and homemade, nothing but water, lemons, and sugar. Nothing in the stores was made with real sugar any more; his first taste of a Coca-Cola had been one of the worst shocks of the 21st century.

It was late, but there was no way he was getting to sleep any time soon. So he wandered over to the stereo and put in a CD that Pepper Potts had given him recently.

"You might know a lot of these songs but be… very surprised by the way they're performed." Pepper smiled almost bashfully. "This album was very important to me when it came out."

The songs were written by Cole Porter; the singers were, of course, no one he had heard of, each song performed by a different soloist or group. He'd always liked Cole Porter. He pressed the play button, then gave in to his baser urges and stripped off his shirt before stretching out on the sofa.

The sharp percussion of the first song almost made him sit up and double-check that he'd put in the right CD. But the words were familiar, even if Mr. Porter wouldn't have recognized them in this arrangement. Steve shrugged and lay back down, hands behind his head, and tried to listen with an open mind, and an open heart.

The second track had a quirky rhythm, but the saxophone was reassuringly familiar. Steve wagged his foot more or less to the beat as the singer's quavery falsetto delivered "In the Still of the Night". Dr. Erskine's treatment had cured his asthma, corrected his eyesight, added inches of height and pounds of muscle to his frame, but it hadn't been able to compensate for a basic lack of rhythm. Sam Wilson had watched Natasha try to teach Steve a few steps and then pronounced, "You are the whitest white boy that ever did white." Natasha had laughed so hard she landed on the floor, gasping. Steve grinned now, remembering.

Laughing with Sam and Nat in the VA hall as she tried to teach him to swing dance and he kept tripping over his own damn feet just the way he had when Bucky tried it years ago. A night with Natasha in a cheap hotel on the road, letting her ride him until they were both exhausted enough to sleep. That time he'd almost kissed Sam and drawn back at the last minute, not sure how Sam would take it. Going home with a guy in a bar who looked about the same age Steve did, had dark hair like Bucky, unshaven chin, deep brown eyes glazed over with liquor, and the guy had sucked Steve off, twice, and wanted Steve to fuck him but Steve couldn't, and they jerked each other off and Steve walked home in the depth of night while the guy slept. Only the once. Once was enough to know that wasn't what he wanted.

He noticed the music again when a version of "Just One of Those Things" that sounded like an Irish jig came crashing through his speakers. Laughing, he got up, carried his glass to the kitchen, and left it in the sink. Back in the living room he turned out the last lamp before peeling off his shorts and dropping back onto the sofa to listen to the rest of the disc.

He liked the performances of "Night and Day" and "You Do Something to Me" very much, along with "Every Time We Say Good-bye". "Night and Day" had the driving urgency he had always found in the song; "Every Time We Say Good-Bye", not as familiar to him, nevertheless made him want to cry.

He only realized he had fallen asleep when he woke up. The city outside was as dark and as quiet as it ever got. It was cool enough now that he thought he could tolerate a sheet over his nudity. He switched off the stereo, stopped in the bathroom to piss, then retreated to the bedroom. Reluctantly, he put down the windows and turned on the air conditioner before pulling back the covers and settling into bed. 

Steve did sleep better with the air conditioner, though he was loath to admit it. He slept later, too, about which he felt vaguely guilty for no reason. His body clock had been set in boot camp and never changed, it seemed. After showering and making the bed, he switched the a/c to a low energy-saver setting and left it on.

Breakfast was often a time when Steve did some Internet research on whatever was interesting. After checking his email, Facebook, and blog reader, he typed in "Red Hot and Blue" and followed the images that matched the art on Pepper's CD. 

There he found the words "AIDS", and "HIV", and "bisexuality". He found "Westboro Baptist Church" and "God hates fags". He found that Cole Porter, who wrote such brilliantly subtle and complex love songs, had loved both women and men; that the hatred he had seen as a kid against men in dresses, women in suits, the little clubs where men danced with men, women with women, people kissed and did more than kiss in back alleys, was still very much alive. It was alive like the greed that denied people housing and healthcare and decent wages, the greed that made rich men curse FDR's name, the greed that piled up money in bank vaults where it did nobody any good.

People had been dying like flies, but nobody had wanted to do anything because they were just those queers, those faggots. Who cares if they died? Who cares what the world would be like without Cole Porter, or Aaron Copland, Michelangelo or Diaghilev, Greta Garbo or--Captain America?

The morning run was longer than usual, and so was the cool-down walk that followed. Steve ran off the anger and the sadness and the old, numb hurt that had been reawakened by his researches. And then he walked so he could think. Running helped you to not think, to get out of your head and all the way into your body. Walking was good for thinking, and Steve needed to think.

It was pretty clear to him now that he was bisexual. Like so many things in this century, it was not something that sat comfortably with him. It wasn't a word they'd had in his day, when he started looking around at girls and then looking back at Bucky. Bucky had shot up like a weed one day--that was how Steve remembered it--his voice had changed, he started shaving, he had hair under his arms and muscles on his shoulders that got hard from working at the docks. And Steve, still in the body of a boy, hadn't been able to take his eyes off Bucky. 

Even a couple years later, when Steve had had the only growth spurt he would get before the serum, when Bucky started trying to fix him up with girls, he'd looked at the girls and then back at Bucky. It had been just another thing that was wrong with him, another way he was a loser. Then the serum had given him muscles that made girls look at him, and touch him, and offer to let him touch them… he had felt less of a loser then, but he still missed Bucky as well as Peggy. Peggy, who had looked at him with affection and respect before the serum, when he was still just his skinny loser self.

The heat was rising again when he finally turned back toward his apartment and switched into a high-gear walk. He picked up a few groceries at the bodega, including more fresh lemons, and climbed the stairs humming under his breath. While he was putting away the groceries, he realized what he'd been humming--a single phrase from one of the Cole Porter songs, "It's too darn hot… it's too darn hot." Smiling to himself, Steve put down the living room windows and turned the air conditioner on full.


End file.
